Waiting on the Other Side
by CassieRose
Summary: A series of haunting, tragic, short stories. Tear jerkers, inside. You're forewarned. R&R. 1: A mother's tears. 2: A prisoner's insanity. 3: Daddy's Jealousy 4: Green Eyes
1. Mother's tears

Emotions hit hard when they are all you have.  
  
My husband James and I have been here for years. I wish I could explain in words how different this place is from the life we once knew. Here you are not alive, you are not dead, nor are you a ghost. You are here for one reason and that one reason alone. If you are in this level of the universe, if you are unfortunate enough to reside with the rest of us, you died at the hands of a Dark force. All that you have left is emotion. Tears and sorrow are a normal occurrence here. You'd expect fluffy white clouds and golden gates, but that's not where we are yet.  
  
James would have been a wonderful father. I remember when we first found out I would be having a baby, James had run out and bought a real broomstick. The look upon his face when I told him a newborn couldn't ride a broomstick ... he was crushed, yet hysterical at the same time. The very next day he had come home with no less than five toy brooms and a miniature set of Quidditch balls. He flat out ignored me when I pointed out a child couldn't ride more than one broomstick at a time. He took it upon himself to decorate the bedroom of our expected child. He adorned the four walls with anything and everything Quidditch. Him and his friends had laughed for hours when I said it was possible our child wouldn't be a fan. Of course I knew any child of James Potter would be a Quidditch fan. He was already calling my tummy his "little boy," a week into the pregnancy. He told me that he just simply knew it was a boy ... and he was right. The first time he held our son, his hazel eyes were dancing. I have never seen him so happy. In the short time we had together as a family, it was pure bliss. The three of us were floating. Maybe deep down I realized it was too perfect to last. It must have been, because our time together was cut extremely short. It's not fair that I only had a year to hold my baby. It's not fair that James never had the chance to play Quidditch with his little boy.  
  
For fifteen years now, my husband and I have had to simply watch. Have you ever had to experience pain? I bet you haven't. It is not possible to experience a feeling so genuine and so horrible unless you are in this position. To watch my son grow up in someone else's hands is beyond tears. I sometimes find James crying, but a mother's pain is past that. I have seen my son through the good times and the bad times, and I have been there for him in ways he cannot recognize. But trust me, I am there. I was there when Hagrid found him in the pile of rubbish that was once our house. I was there when my sister found him on her doorstep. I was there during his most precious years of adolescence, as he spent lonely nights in his cupboard, wondering why his life was the way it was. I was there during his first broomstick ride. I was there when his name was pulled out of the Goblet of Fire. I have watched him go through everything -- his first bruise to his first girlfriend. I am always there. I will always be there.  
  
Pain is when I can't reach out and touch him. He doesn't know I'm there. I cannot give him the knowledge his elders have been denying him. The one thing he has wanted for his entire life has been truth. I want more than anything to give him the truth he wants ... the entire story ... but I can't. Knowing this feels like a knife is twisting through my body. Words don't give my story enough justice. If I was in a place where sanity existed... I would have lost all of it a hundred times over by now. To watch my own sister abusing my baby ... starving him and pushing him down to make her own feel superior. I have watched him be emotionally, and sometimes even physically, abused in that household. At school I watch him fight, I watch him stand up for what he believes in. James enjoys watching him play Quidditch. He is like his father in more ways than anyone recognizes. His pride, his heroic actions, his bravery, his wit, his entire life. But his eyes ... those are mine. Such horror he has seen through those eyes.  
  
About a year ago, my son's school mate had come here. He was the first new face in many years and it was a wonderful and terrible time. I remember him crying endlessly out for his mother and father. I tried to help him, to give him a mother's embrace, but I was not his mother. I could only help so much. He was shocked when I eventually told him who I was. He reassured me that my son was a good boy. Cedric and I cross paths every once in a while ... he watches over his parents constantly. He admitted to me once that although he knew it was selfish, he wished for his parents to come.   
  
When we aren't watching our son, which is only on very rare, brief occasions, we have gazed upon old friends. We watched little back-stabbing Peter Pettigrew, or Scabbers, they called him. How frightened we were when his owner became best friends with our son. We knew someday what it would come to. We watched as our son found out Scabber's true identity, and spared his life. He saved the human being that had only given him a life of terror. James and I were so proud of him. He had helped an enemy, an action that showed so much courage. He will someday see how noble his heart was.  
  
We watched as Remus Lupin sunk into a deep depression. He sat for years in that shabby flat of his, lonely and without a soul to turn to. How we wished we could be there for him. Good old Moony. We watched as he was finally, after so long, offered a job. He helped our son overcome his fears, and at the same time our son helped him sink back into reality. We continue to watch him help our son through such a horrible time. Words do not explain how great this man has been.  
  
James and I didn't expect to see Padfoot so soon. We didn't want to. We used to watch him in his Azkaban cell. Every time I saw him I was in tears. That man was not a murderer. That sweet, energetic, brave man would never betray us. How could they have been so blind? We watched as he escaped, as he found the one who betrayed his best friend, and as he breathed and tasted revenge so viciously. We watched him over the next two years, as he was being chased. He still found it in his heart to play the role of a father to the best of his ability. I was so proud of dear old Padfoot. My happiest moments here were spent watching our son and his Godfather together, laughing. The tears shed at those moments were of sweet, utter happiness. It was the strangest feeling to have salty tears slide down my cheek and a smile on my lips; a feeling I hadn't experienced in so long. He was the closest thing to a parent our son would ever know.   
  
We had seen him coming. James and I were terrified, but there was nothing we could do to stop it, so we waited. As he stood up, we were there to welcome him. He cried for a while. Most do once they enter. He told us he tried to be the Godfather that we would want him to be. I do believe he tried very hard to be a wonderful father figure for our son to look up to, and I am very thankful. I know James was happy to see him, but I was so upset. Our son now was alone. As James and Sirius embraced old times, I went alone to watch the scene. Moony restrained our son from running after Sirius. When he finally broke away I watched him run after Sirius's murderer, threatening her. For the first time, I felt what Cedric had felt. I wanted him to die at her hands so he could be with me. Later I was disgusted with myself for such a selfish thought, but at the time I couldn't help it. I wanted to embrace my son. Hug him, cry to him, yell at him, kiss him, look into his eyes; all the things I have been denied for so long.   
  
But for now, all I can do is watch my son grow up even more. He is turning sixteen soon. He is becoming a man and I will watch him leave his childhood and continue to grow. I will watch him become the most powerful wizard ever in existence. I will watch him marry a woman who loves him with all her heart. Him and his wife will have beautiful children and watch them as I have watched my own child, but they won't have to watch from a distance. The two of them will be wonderful parents. They will love their children endlessly, teaching them everything they know. They will be the parents James and I never had the chance to be. He will be the father James wanted to be so bad. He has to be ... we need him to be. I never want to see my son hurt again.  
  
And as for us ... we will still be here, drowning in tears and sorrow until the day the Dark side is finished. All of us long for that day when we will finally see those golden gates and fluffy white clouds. We know we are close to moving on from what the new arrivals have been saying. Yet at the moment I am stuck in this alternate reality ... still waiting. We are all waiting. We are all waiting for the Dark Lord to be defeated.  
  
My son will be the one to save us. He will be our hero.  
  
And when the day comes when I won't have to simply watch from a distance ... when his time on Earth is finished... I will be ready to embrace him. Harry James Potter, I am waiting for you on the other side. 


	2. Prisoner's Sanity

(I've decided to do a different tragic situation... If you have a request let me know.)  
  
I never got that kiss.  
  
The Minister of Magic had promised me I would receive a kiss from a monster. Everyone knows what I'm talking about. The monsters who guard me night and day. Dementors, people call them. The Minister had sworn "on his mother's grave" that I would be administered a kiss. His mother's grave must be in flames.  
  
I never received the kiss. My lips have not been kissed in .... well, time is irrelevant now that I am here. It doesn't matter whether it's light or dark, cold or warm. I'm in hell.   
  
I grew up in a manor. We had servants and I was filthy rich. I went to school where I had four best friends and a million admirers. Now I live in this stoned prison, where I've become so numb. Sometimes I wish I had been kissed. I may be looking at a different picture. When I open my eyes all I see is charcoal walls, some metal bars near the top. I wonder if I'd be claustrophobic if this wasn't my home. Maybe the kiss would kill me. Maybe I wouldn't be looking at a picture. I guess that would only come with luck; something I'd never had a lot of.  
  
My childhood has erased itself from memory. I've tried to convince myself that nothing has happened before this. My family, Hogwarts, my best friends, my Godson... none of them can exist. Because, if they do really exist, I will go insane. I was never a child, a student, a friend. A child grows. A student learns. A friend is honest. I have been none of those. I am not human. I am without a soul. I've never grown, never learned, was never honest. If I was, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be in Azkaban.  
  
I still remember the day my best friend James Potter asked Lily Evans to marry him. I laughed endlessly at him. Laughing. God, how I miss it. James and Lily were in love, yes, but we were so young! It was Christmas of our 7th year at Hogwarts when he asked her. A few years later little Harry James was born. Lily refused to call him Sirius as much as I protested. God, how beautiful Harry was. He had Lily's startling green eyes, but the rest was James. His hair, his giggle. I proclaimed myself Godfather before James and Lily had the chance. Who else would they pick? I was in love with the little boy. I had never before had such an emotion. I wish I could remember the feeling, but it's impossible to duplicate.  
  
Hell. How did I not see it? Betrayal. It stings. It is a wound that cannot heal. Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew were mine and James's best friends. I knew one of them was out to get us. Betray us. It was a 50/50 chance, and I picked wrong. Damn it! The most important decision of my life, I pick wrong. How? Why? I knew the consequence. How the hell was I so damn blind?! I thought Remus was giving information to the Dark Lord. I thought Remus was ratting out James and Lily. God. Who else would "rat" but the rat himself?! Peter Pettigrew, the filthy traitor. I wish I could fully blame him. I wish I could take out ten years of anger on him.   
  
But I can't. I killed my best friends. I killed James and Lily. "Damn you," were my last words to James. I forced him to change the secret keeper to Pettigrew. It was my fault. We fought over it and nearly became violent. I thought it was for the best, I swear. Right after I told James, I went to check on Peter, make sure things were going according to my "brilliant" plan.   
  
And that's when my soul left and my insides froze.  
  
Ten long years ago. Peter was gone, he stabbed us all in the back, and the night ended with James and Lily Potter dead. I chased him down. I wanted to kill him. I was going to kill him. I was so close!   
  
Plan number two: failed. And here I am.   
  
God damn it, James. I know you're here because I dream of you. I hear your voice constantly, pounding into me, replacing my heart beat. My once pleasant dreams are filled with your face, blinding me, haunting me. The fucking memory of you chased away my sanity. I've tried to tell myself that you're gone. I'm bound to your life that once was. I see through your eyes because you can't anymore. Alone, I am nothing.  
  
This is what haunts me every time I close my eyes. This pain isn't a dream because it is too real. Time cannot erase these wounds. James is gone. Lily is gone. And I am gone. The presence of the once been, might have been lingers within me, boiling. It won't leave me alone. I want it to end, for everything to end.   
  
And it's been like this for twelve years. I see you every day and every night, your shadow next to me. But I've been alone all along. 


	3. Daddy's jealousy

[Thank you to the latest commenter. I've been meaning too write, honestly, it's just been hard to get motivated again. But here I am -- thank you again. This one is short but this was just quickie- you guys just wait!! I have something a little different in the works that will be Chap 4... I'm excited. You too?]  
  
They say when you die you see the light. That every question is answered once this light emerges. It carries you away from everything you had built, all your hopes, dreams, and fantasies are washed away. For the sake of mankind, I never expected that light to be green.   
  
Green.  
  
Green like the eyes of the two people my world revolved around. My son and my wife both had the same eyes. The eyes that I constantly would be lost in. The eyes I fell in love with everytime I saw them. I wanted to sheild my wive's eyes just so the world wouldn't get to share what I loved so much. That shade of green was the death of me.  
  
I do not regret my life. I lived everyday as happily as I could. I know I was a good friend, hard worker, and a caring husband. I just pray upon my own grave that I was the perfect father. But how perfect could a father be when he only had his son for a short amount of time?  
  
Damn, I wanted to be the best dad. The pain is unbearable when I think of how much I let my son down. My son! 15 years later I'm still amazed that I even had a son. Atleast, I think it's amazement. The lack of emotion in my residing is pathetic. Everything is faint except the stabbing pain I feel in every inch of my body. A thousand nails pounded into me is nearly equivalent to the longing I feel. It's as if the second I left, I wanted to go back. I'm alone. I'm worse than alone; I'm empty.  
  
The worst part is, Lily has never left my side.  
  
How can I feel so abandoned when the woman I love is next to me? Maybe it's due to the fact that not only emotion is faint. Color is as well. I don't see the green in her eyes anymore.  
  
The hate it when she wants to go watch Harry. She watched him as he was malnourished by my inlaws. She watched him go through endless pain time and time again. How could she watch that? I was there, but I never watched. I stood next to her, drained, looking at the grass, longing to run through it. Maybe with my shoes off right after it rained. I was hungry for the simple joys and thirsty for the fear my son was going through. I wanted everything he had. I was jealous of my baby boy. I loved my life and it was not complete.   
  
I hate the betrayal that stung us. I hate the lies that are told to my son. I hate the beautiful green eyes that my son has to see in the mirror every day of his life. I hate the ignorance in the world. I hate that I was defeated. Defeated by the man I lived to bring down.   
  
Voldemort overpowered me.   
  
And as much as I hate to admit it, I know what my son is capable of. I know the secrets that the world does not. I know who will be victorious in the end.  
  
And I wouldn't have it any other way. 


	4. Green Eyes

(Here it is! Another Lily view cause I like writing from her perspective. It doesn't have to be in character cause we don't know what she's like.)  
  
"Lily," I heard a voice whisper through the shadows. I shook my head. No. "Lily... it's me..." the voice whispered directly into my ear. It was a haunting voice, echoing off the walls and hitting me right in the heart. A voice that pulled me by an unknown magnetic force deeper into a place where that voice was not allowed to linger.  
  
Trespassing. That's what it was.  
  
Reluctantly, I looked into the voice's face. Tears were streaming down it, slowly. They dried into ice before reaching his lips. His black hair was short and neat, just how I remembered it. His dark eyes so full of emotion in a place that had to forbid it. He smiled. Smiling was not allowed. Didn't he know what he was doing? I saw his smile in all different lights, as it twisted and turned, radiating like the gleam in his eyes.  
  
He was so holy to me. A sacred and untouched topic. I was afraid to speak his name, for fear of tainting it. So beautiful and precious. "Sirius..." He nodded and touched my face, wiping away something. It couldn't have been a tear; I do not cry. This place that doesn't allow emotions has not allowed me to feel anything. So why was I so scared? Fear. I hardly remember it, but inside me it has ignited. I was trembling. His hand rested on my icy face.  
  
He was still warm.   
  
He was the cause of the fire. My fear was from him. With his hand on me I felt life spread through my spine.   
  
I hated it.  
  
"It's me, Lily," he smiled painfully. Don't smile. This isn't a place for happiness. Do you see bright lights? Fluffy clouds? What about a shiny golden gate? They don't exist. This is a place where we mourn for the living. That is all we do. He held my hands, "where's those green eyes?" His smile slithered slowly into a prominent frown, his own eyes slowly draining of their color as well. I wimpered.  
  
"You can't be here..." I spoke in not even a whisper. His face held confusion and I spoke slower, "Please." That one word twisted his face and to see his color start to slowly fade was an electrical charge running within my system.  
  
It felt good.  
  
"You're dying," I muttered to him, bitterness in my voice overpowering the once stated fear. "You entered alive, and now you're dying. Go back to my son."  
  
He didn't leave. He was fading more.   
  
"LEAVE SIRIUS!"  
  
He stood rooted to the spot. I felt my eyes glisten.   
  
"My son," I cried to him. He came to embrace me and I stepped back, away from him, "Harry needs you." His eyes still held a little color. The big oblivion which I could stare for hours into, maybe days, or until the end of time. I love those eyes, and I hate to see them hurt.   
  
Tears were streaming down the sides of his face, but maybe that's traces of my own.   
  
He understood. I saw it inside of him, we were one. He turned to leave but I could not dettach myself from his side, or remove him from my heart. My brain. My thoughts. My mind. He was flowing inside of me, freely. My lips were telling him to move. Demanding him. But my heart was not in it.   
  
"Harry needs me," he said. He couldn't leave. I had him under a spell, crazy time consuming witchery. I didn't brew a magic potion. It was love. Not the love I have for my husband, it was beyond that. He was my son's hero. My hero. I needed him here with me to provide me with traces of my son. My flesh and blood. He loved Harry. I need a system recharge; someone to refresh my memory, I need his love for my son.   
  
They say love is the slowest form of suicide.  
  
Then why the fuck won't Sirius die?  
  
I'm split into two, between living and dead, black and white, love and hate. I want him alive to save my son. I want him dead, to stay with me.   
  
I knew Harry needed him more. I knew Sirius needed Harry. Sirius couldn't live like me. He couldn't just watch through the blur on the wall; he couldn't become disillusioned like me.   
  
I raised my head to look at him. To look into his living eyes, to tell him to leave. To go save my son. To help Harry through everything. To be the parent I cannot be. To be there to hear him breathe, to feel his heart beat.   
  
But as I looked into his now stone cold face, all life was gone.   
  
I was too late.  
  
His face held no trace of sorrow or fear. It held no emotion. His eyes were blank as they tore into my insides, ripping me apart. How was I still allowed to feel? I still felt the fire inside of me, the flames burning into me. Acidic tears stung my eyes, my cheeks, and finally my lips.  
  
And Sirius Black, my hero, came close to me and whispered, "How I love those green eyes." 


End file.
